He told Newsweek: 'If you read The Remains of the Day, which is one of my favourite books, you can't help but come away and think, I just spent 10 hours living an alternate life and I learned something about life and about regret.'

Tony Hsieh is building up downtown Las Vegas as a hot new tech hub, and he's also the CEO of Amazon-owned shoe company, Zappos.

'It's very clever. It acknowledges that young people are a little confused, but can be smart about things and see things that adults don't really see. So I've always loved it,' he told the Academy of Achievement.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, lists a lot of interests on his Facebook profile. But the only book listed is Orson Scott Card's science fiction novel, Ender's Game.

Gawande is a doctor and writer for the New Yorker. Its premise: A simple checklist can help people manage complex situations. Gawande uses a number of examples across a variety of industries, from medicine, technology and even disaster relief to illustrate his point.

'Success metric for my work @Twitter: these books disappear from my desk. (you should read it too),' Dorsey tweeted in April.

Smart specifically studied how such people made their most difficult decision in judging whether to give money to an entrepreneur or not. You would think that this would be whether the entrepreneur's idea is actually a good one. But finding an idea is apparently not all that hard. Finding an entrepreneur who can execute a good idea is a different matter entirely. One needs a person who can take an idea from proposal to reality, work the long hours, build a team, handle the pressures and setbacks, manage technical and people problems alike, and stick with the effort for years on end without getting distracted or going insane. Such people are rare and extremely hard to spot.